Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Surfside Beach, S.C.

"Cruising Surfside"

6"x 12" Oil on stretched canvas.

Painted from a shot from my recent trip to Surfside Beach, you can see Myrtle Beach in the distance. This was a very windy day with sand blowing horizontally across the beach whipping against the cruiser's legs as they walked along. The many clouds overhead cast constantly moving shadows along the beach and bathers. What a wonderful day it was!

It didn't take me long to realize the difficulty I was having with this painting was largely due to the textured surface of the cotton canvas. I'm so used to working on board, which better yields itself to details and also takes a lot less paint! I have thought in the past when working on canvas that I'm being too stingy with the paint. After covering this beach scene with paint all over in non-thinned oil paint and letting it dry, I went back with thicker paint and large brushes. This worked much better for me but I do think that I've tried to include a bit more detail than I should on this size canvas. I really like the brushstrokes as they appear on the original, but the photo is lacking in it's ability to show them. Still rusty from my time away... moving on.....

3 comments:

Susan Roux said...

This painting is beautiful! I love the beach and your rendition captures its lovely colors and movement. Yes its a lot for such a small canvas. You should consider doing it very large. It would be magnificent!

Dana Cooper said...

Marilyn, this wonderful, you got so much information on such a small format...my favorite is the figure on the left with the green skirt!

Carol Blackburn said...

Great ocean scene, Marilyn. I agree with Susan, large would be spectacular.